Br. Jack Crowley

The Nativity of St. John the Baptist

Luke 1:57-80

So much happens before we are even born. I know that’s quite an understatement, but it’s true. So much happens before we are even born.

No one is born into a blank story. We are born into ongoing stories that are well under way by the time we take our first breath. These are the stories of our parents, the stories of our ancestors, and the stories of the age we live in. We are born into a story already filled with characters.  We are born into a story so full of meaning that it takes a lifetime to understand it.

Tonight we celebrate the Nativity of Saint John the Baptist. To put it simply, the story of his nativity is awesome. John was born of a couple seemingly too old to conceive. By his birth alone, John the Baptist shows us the amazing power of God to make life happen when it feels impossible. Out of seemingly nothing came not only something, but something awesome.

My favorite part of this story is about John’s father Zechariah. Zechariah  is struck mute by the angel Gabriel shortly before conceiving John. As a result, Zechariah  cannot speak for the entirety of his wife’s pregnancy. Just think about that for a moment, that’s nine months, three whole seasons, of not speaking. Imagine if walking home tonight you were struck mute by an angel and couldn’t speak until next March. I’m guessing a lot would build up in your head during that time.

Finally, Zechariah ’s tongue is loosened shortly after John’s birth and he is filled by the Holy Spirit and delivers an epic prophecy about the life of his son. This prophecy describes the story that Saint John the Baptist was entering into. This was a story of God. A story full of mercy and forgiveness. A story of how John would lead the way for the author of our salvation.

The story of John’s life is not an easy one, but it is an awesome one. John helped out so many people and got the world ready for what was to come. The end of the story of John’s life on earth is brutal and violent. His end came with his head on a platter, but that is not the end of the story of our salvation.

We all know we work out the story of our salvation with fear and trembling. Every day of our lives we add a new chapter to that story. Every morning, when that dreaded alarm clock goes off, we start telling ourselves that story. Pay attention to that story. Is it a story full of stress and anxiety? Is it a story of healing and hope?

We may long to escape the story we are in. We may long to turn the page or skip a few chapters. We may wish for a new author or even a new protagonist, yet inevitably we end up right here again in the middle of it all.

No matter what your story is, keep turning back to God. Repent, rearrange, reorient, reintroduce, review, renew, re-whatever yourself back to God. Saint John the Baptist was emphatic about this: we must keep turning back to God.

We must do our best with God’s help to stay present, centered, and engaged with the God-given stories of our God-given lives. Of course this is easier to do when things are going well. The challenge, the cauldron of our faith, is when our stories stop making sense.

If your life and the world around you seems to be full of chaotic stories that don’t make sense, you are not alone. We are all struggling in this time to find a coherent meaning to what’s going on around us. In such times of chaos, it can be hard to find the thread, that awesome thread of the Holy Spirit that links all this insanity around us into something that makes sense. It’s that holy clue that leads us out of this maze of darkness and into the light.

If right now you don’t have a clue what you are doing, keep searching. Pray hard and pray often. Keep examining your life with brutal honesty and always be on the lookout for God. Find that thread and follow it with everything you have.